[axllebeer]

Okay so like many others I've had the keyboard lag, browser slow, apps not opening as fast as they used to. You name it.

I've been a PlayBook owners since launch, and things were getting out of control. I tried backing it up with DM several times and it would never work. I still had the bug that would make pictures drop into random folders and everything was getting so bad that I was barely using the PlayBook at all.

So if you are like me, copy your pictures and other personal stuff manually and bite the bullet and just wipe it. It's like brand new again, and I'm loving it! I'm sitting here typing this, downloading my App World apps, Facebook running, dropbox, downloading YouTube videos, watching a native video, and I have Blaq running and everything is as fast as can be.

I know there are other threads about the PlayBook slowing down and such, but that's not the point of me starting this thread. The point is, I was scared to do it. And now that it's done, no regrets. So don't back up with DM, forget where you were in that game, just start fresh. And really we all need that new BB feel to make it to BB10 launch so, go for it.

That is all, cheers.

[trinipoco]

Agreed, I had the same problems and wiping solved all issues. I was able to back up and restore pics and videos, but it was time consuming.

[axllebeer]

Yes I spent several hrs getting everything just the way I wanted it again but was very much worth it. Everyone here was sleeping so hey what else would I do haha

[torndownunit]

I am not going to have any choice but to try this. The performance of my Playbook has been horrid since the last 2 updates.

[Rellskie]

It does work wonders. I had to recently do this a few days ago because my playbook performance was so slow. So I just backed up my important stuff and wiped it. I don't know if it was because I was down to about 6 GB left on my playbook or what, but after a fresh start its running smooth as ever. So I just loaded up all my essential apps and that's it.


Tapatalking on my iPhone

[CairnsRock]

Do you lose your apps, email, contact, calender settings etc

[axllebeer]

Do you lose your apps, email, contact, calender settings etc

Yes but those are pretty easy to restore. Log in with your BBID and all your apps are available for re download in App World. In Accounts for me since I use my Google account just put it back in there and email, calendar, and contact are restored through Google sync.

[daglesj]

Yeah often does the trick. My four year old QNAP Nas was playing up recently. It wouldnt stay on the network, the print server kept failing, just terrible, even with a new firmware. I was going to replace it but then decided to copy the 700gb of data off it and do a total reset.

Well its now working better than ever. Saved me buying a new nas too.

[dieter jay]

yes.., it's basically the same as our blackberry.handset.

I'm pretty sure most of us here.., frequently do OS update and wipe the handset before updating.
not just install new OS on top of the old one..., like we usually did during playbook OS update.
and the result is a "new" handset with new and clean OS.

we should do the same treatment to our playbook.
well.. hopefully not as often as wiping the blackberry...

cheers.

[DirtySantos]

Thanks for this. I had bought my wife a Nexus 7 recently and I have to admit that, compared to my Playbook, it was pretty snappy with input response. My Playbook was lagging badly and I thought it was just the tablet showing its age. I bit the bullet tonight and did a wipe and the difference is night and day. So happy I did it. My only regret is that the stock wallpapers (which I liked a lot) are gone. Oh well.

[xSt0rmTroop3Rx]

I've got the 16gb variety and this is the first time I have wiped it since I got it!! (Mind you, I had several large games on here before the wipe; The Bard's Tale, MC3, NOVA 2, etc...) And its like a whole new device! The keyboard works buttery smooth, apps open and close just as QNX should! The PB really shines after a wipe! Its not something I wanna do often so I guess I've gotta just be careful about what I download from now on! (Although I'm likely going to reload The Bard's Tale, because it was the only game I really played and it was thoroughly entertaining!)

That being said, its just occured to me...am I going to lose the progress I made on that game?! That would be a real bummer...

[omniusovermind]

Yes it works but how often are you willing to do a wipe? I'm only getting about 2-3 months of boosted post wipe performance and then the lagginess starts to creep back in. I'm still blaming the introduction of an older version of the android VM for this problem. I said it was causing these slowdowns when they first introduced it and I still stand by that.
I never encountered this strange deterioration of speed over time until the VM was put on the playbook OS. I find myself wishing their was a toggle to disable it completely in the device settings. I plan on doing another wipe soon and this time I'm not going to install any Android apps and see how it goes.

[Rellskie]

Yes it works but how often are you willing to do a wipe? I'm only getting about 2-3 months of boosted post wipe performance and then the lagginess starts to creep back in. I'm still blaming the introduction of an older version of the android VM for this problem. I said it was causing these slowdowns when they first introduced it and I still stand by that.
I never encountered this strange deterioration of speed over time until the VM was put on the playbook OS. I find myself wishing their was a toggle to disable it completely in the device settings. I plan on doing another wipe soon and this time I'm not going to install any Android apps and see how it goes.

Yeah you may be on to something here. I swear once I loaded up a lot of android apps on my playbook it started to act up and began to lag. I just loaded up one android app that I use a lot and that's it. So i plan to monitor my playbook and see how it performs.


Tapatalking on my iPhone

[omniusovermind]

Yeah you may be on to something here. I swear once I loaded up a lot of android apps on my playbook it started to act up and began to lag. I just loaded up one android app that I use a lot and that's it. So i plan to monitor my playbook and see how it performs.


Tapatalking on my iPhone

There was a really big debate about whether or not the VM was causing slowdowns on QNX when it first came out. Those opposed to that stated basically

-that unused RAM in Android was wasted memory and any memory used by the VM had no impact on the PB
-that Android is designed to manage RAM itself and free up memory as needed (true but see below)
-that any background stuff running on Android doesn't actually use any resources

My rebuttal to all of that was, and still is, simply this: That's how Android was "designed" to run. In theory. In actual practice it does not do at as efficiently as Android's engineers have stated.
Just the mere existence of "Project Butter" on Android Jelly Bean provides all of the proof you need to illustrate that. The Playbook's android VM is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. I've owned and used gingerbread for 2 years, and it's not that efficient at all. What depresses me is that they're putting the android VM into BB10.

[kbz1960]

Thanks for this. I had bought my wife a Nexus 7 recently and I have to admit that, compared to my Playbook, it was pretty snappy with input response. My Playbook was lagging badly and I thought it was just the tablet showing its age. I bit the bullet tonight and did a wipe and the difference is night and day. So happy I did it. My only regret is that the stock wallpapers (which I liked a lot) are gone. Oh well.

You can find them or a debrick puts them all on.

[Rellskie]

There was a really big debate about whether or not the VM was causing slowdowns on QNX when it first came out. Those opposed to that stated basically

-that unused RAM in Android was wasted memory and any memory used by the VM had no impact on the PB
-that Android is designed to manage RAM itself and free up memory as needed (true but see below)
-that any background stuff running on Android doesn't actually use any resources

My rebuttal to all of that was, and still is, simply this: That's how Android was "designed" to run. In theory. In actual practice it does not do at as efficiently as Android's engineers have stated.
Just the mere existence of "Project Butter" on Android Jelly Bean provides all of the proof you need to illustrate that. The Playbook's android VM is based on Android 2.3 Gingerbread. I've owned and used gingerbread for 2 years, and it's not that efficient at all. What depresses me is that they're putting the android VM into BB10.

That's interesting stuff. I don't like the idea I putting it in bb10. It just has to many problems to me right now.


Tapatalking on my iPhone

[torndownunit]

Yeah you may be on to something here. I swear once I loaded up a lot of android apps on my playbook it started to act up and began to lag. I just loaded up one android app that I use a lot and that's it. So i plan to monitor my playbook and see how it performs.


Tapatalking on my iPhone

The only problem is the 3 main apps I use on a daily basis (other than the browser) are Android apps lol. If it is an Android VM issue, I am in trouble.

[Rellskie]

The only problem is the 3 main apps I use on a daily basis (other than the browser) are Android apps lol. If it is an Android VM issue, I am in trouble.

Lol yeah that's a problem. Well if the android apps are working for you then that's good. I'm just sick of having some work for me and some not. Like some I tried to use always show "no Internet connection" when I clearly have the wifi enabled. Little stuff like that is annoying.


Tapatalking on my iPhone

[QuIcKsIlV3r]

I'm curious, are you guys doing a full backup and restore? Reason why I'm asking is because if you're not restoring after, you loose things like saved games and such. There are a bunch of games I have played and gotten far or have beat, and keep the saved games. So just curious, cause I may need to do this again myself...

[kill_9]

What depresses me is that they're putting the android VM into BB10.

But Heins needs his 100,000+ applications at BlackBerry 10 launch. < sarcasm drips from my chin as I choke on some Gingerbread in my VM >

[F2]

yes.., it's basically the same as our blackberry.handset.

I'm pretty sure most of us here.., frequently do OS update and wipe the handset before updating.
not just install new OS on top of the old one..., like we usually did during playbook OS update.
and the result is a "new" handset with new and clean OS.

we should do the same treatment to our playbook.
well.. hopefully not as often as wiping the blackberry...

cheers.

But on the pb phone, my 32 gigs of data is on a separate sd card and does not need to be copied (I do that pretty routinely) but then tediously restored. My 64gig pb takes hours, if not longer to Restore. Also, add in the complication that some of us canNOT successfully backup the pb using Desktop Software.

And, if an app has changed price, you may not be able to restore or just download it from appworld again.

I still strongly maintain that RIM should give up the ability to selectively backup and restore individual apps.

[kill_9]

I'm curious, are you guys doing a full backup and restore? Reason why I'm asking is because if you're not restoring after, you loose things like saved games and such. There are a bunch of games I have played and gotten far or have beat, and keep the saved games. So just curious, cause I may need to do this again myself...

You can use BlackBerry Desktop Software to completely back-up the tablet as well as manually backing up any media and documents as a secondary backup. Then wipe the tablet and selectively restore the games and associated game data using BlackBerry Desktop Software. Next, manually transfer media and documents to the tablet but so not use BlackBerry Desktop Software for this part. Restore applications from BlackBerry AppWorld. In the end you will have a fully restored tablet.

[axllebeer]

I'm curious, are you guys doing a full backup and restore? Reason why I'm asking is because if you're not restoring after, you loose things like saved games and such. There are a bunch of games I have played and gotten far or have beat, and keep the saved games. So just curious, cause I may need to do this again myself...

No I did not. I was unable to get DM to work and decided I wasn't putting anymore time into it. So I copied my pictures and videos and started fresh. Lost game progress but I decided I'm Ok with that.

[eddy_berry]

Regarding DM not working. Wasn't there posts listed where turning off wifi made it work properly? That worked immediately for me and you can keep your save games and all apps and settings come back. As for slow systems, in my experience, it was directly related to certain android apps and nothing else. Especially if you have an android app killer. Some don't kill themselves and eat up 100+mb of memory. Ghost commander is the only one I have not seen use so much resources. Slow system got blazing fast again just by simply uninstalling problem android apps. No need for security wipe. Keep an eye on available memory, if it's under 300 with no apps running, you have a problem android app. Uninstall it if you have an android app killer or kill the app after you use it with ghost commander. Saves me from having to security wipe.

[axllebeer]

Regarding DM not working. Wasn't there posts listed where turning off wifi made it work properly? That worked immediately for me and you can keep your save games and all apps and settings come back. As for slow systems, in my experience, it was directly related to certain android apps and nothing else. Especially if you have an android app killer. Some don't kill themselves and eat up 100+mb of memory. Ghost commander is the only one I have not seen use so much resources. Slow system got blazing fast again just by simply uninstalling problem android apps. No need for security wipe. Keep an eye on available memory, if it's under 300 with no apps running, you have a problem android app. Uninstall it if you have an android app killer or kill the app after you use it with ghost commander. Saves me from having to security wipe.

Yes I tried the wifi thing with no luck. I've always been able to backup my BB phones but never a full backup of my PB. Don't know why. But it's done now and I still have no regrets. If saving game progress is very important to someone then I do urge everyone to keep trying and explore other threads for help. I wasn't able to do it, but plenty others have so don't give up. But I didn't care so this worked for me.

I'm certain that my slow downs were related to Android apps, and the fragmentation that they leave behind after trying one then deleting it after side loading. Also I think with the Dosbox app I wonder if I created a problem there as I had plenty of DOS games and such on mine too.